


Sanctuary

by humblydefiant



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Generic Shepard, Other, Post-Canon, dealing with death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-03-21 14:07:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13742574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/humblydefiant/pseuds/humblydefiant
Summary: Shepard struggles to console Kaidan as his mother's death draws near. It's very short but there's plenty of angst packed in.





	Sanctuary

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a quick drabble spurred by recent events in my life. I wrote it with a generic Shepard so the reader could insert the Shepard of their choice.

Shepard hovered just inside the door. They wanted to go to Kaidan. To hold him. Whisper condolences in his ear. Tell him everything would be okay. To lie. Even though he’d know better. But they didn’t move, fearful of being too unholy to enter the sacred space around grieving son and dying mother.

The room remained dark. Curtains drawn tight against the mid-day sun. It’s how she wanted it or so they guessed. Each time they tried to open them she blinked and moaned. She hadn’t spoken in three days. “My beautiful children” - it was the last thing she’d said when she had opened her eyes and seen Kaidan and Shepard standing watch beside her. That moment would make a lovely memory. Someday. For now, it seemed like a cruel joke of the universe - one final reminder of what they’d soon miss.

Through the shroud of silence, Shepard watched their husband sit at his mother’s bedside, his right hand holding hers. His left working through her hair that spilled out over the pillow. His shoulders hunched forward, his own hair disheveled. Weeds of gray had sprouted seemingly overnight amongst his ebony strands, spreading from his temples where they’d been established for some time. Shepard would have given him a hard time about it if either of them felt like laughing.

They couldn’t see his face but knew that he stared at her with red eyes framed by darkened lids in the shadow of thundercloud eyebrows. Was he crying? Doubtful. Tears would flow freely soon, they feared, but he wouldn’t let her see any of those. No, never. He would force smiles while professing his love whether she understood him or not. Whether she was aware of his presence or not - or her own.

Towards what did her eyes peer when they opened on those rare occasions. Did they take in the dim room? Did they recognize the worried faces next to her bed? Shepard wondered, for her gray eyes seemed always to be looking passed, perhaps catching glimpses of whatever came next. Shepard didn’t believe in such things but who knew. They knew only that the light within those eyes, once warm and beaming, had already flickered out.

Kaidan’s hand stopped moving through her hair and moved to his face, perhaps to pinch the top of his nose in an attempt to ward off an encroaching migraine. Shepard dared now to go to him, to intrude upon the inner sanctum, but they could not break the silence. No, not yet. What would they say? So they placed a hand on his shoulder lightly, poised to draw back if it failed him somehow. The gesture was woefully insignificant after all. 

Shepard was woefully insignificant. 

Savior of the Citadel. Of humanity. Of the fucking galaxy. It meant shit now for it offered them no power to syphon away the pain that the man that they loved felt over the last few weeks as his mother visibly waned. All they could offer was a hand. A hug. A sad smile. And it was all nothing.  
“Hey,” he muttered in his way and the balm of it flooded Shepard’s own aching heart. It brought tears knocking at Shepard’s throat. But they locked those tears away, stored them for later. For they mourned, too. For their hurting husband. For the mother of his that welcomed Shepard with a hug and a smile from day one, made them one of their own. And the memories that she built for them - with them - in their time together.

It felt odd, really. Once upon a time, Shepard and Kaidan had tried to steel themselves against the death of one, or the other, of them. If that had happened - well, who knows how successful either of them would have been at surviving the other. Perhaps some other reality knew the answer to that question. But, here, they had lived the decades they hadn’t dared hope for back then - as lovers, as spouses, as a family. And Mrs. Alenko had been very much a part of that.

She had filled their borrowed time with so much life, so much light and happiness. It proved no mystery why Kaidan was so special for it was practically his birthright.

Damn. They hated to see her go. It hurt like hell. But what they felt didn’t matter. Who mattered most now sat hunched at the bedside, shoulders slouched from the burden they carried. 

“You - you should get some rest.” The words fell like lead at their feet. Stupid and clumsy and meaningless. But there they were, just lying there said. Clutter to be kicked aside. 

Kaidan didn’t answer, just squeezed the hand still at his shoulder.

Shepard chewed at their lip, reticent to say anything more but feeling the compulsion to. Distraction might be the only tool at their disposal to ease his pain. “Has she been awake at all?”

He nodded. “For a few minutes. I got her to take a few sips of water.”

“That’s good.” And it was good, they supposed, in some miniscule way. It didn’t feel like good news, though. But they couldn’t say that. Or anything else that wouldn’t prove any less futile. So they stood there, hovering in silence, in limbo - to stay and be an intrusion, or to leave and desert him.

“I feel like I’ve let her down.”

The shock of Kaidan’s confession brought Shepard to their knees. Their universe condensed to a focal point around Kaidan and left no room for their own petty sense of uselessness. It left only the impulse to sweep to his side, cocoon him within their arms and plant their face in his neck. And their hands pulled him tighter and their fingers anchored in his hair and their forehead nuzzled at his ear while they pleaded with him. “What? No. No! What are you saying? How can you think that?” 

“I -” The words languished in his throat as a fresh flood of tears welled at his eyes. Shepard felt the heat of one as it transferred from his cheek to theirs and blazed its path down their neck. His chest heaved like fault lines releasing pressure long buried yet boiling. Shepard had only witnessed Kaidan crying two times before, this being the third. Each time, the paradox of its horrific beauty threatened to render the fabric of Shepard’s own soul. 

How could something so precious as this man’s tears speak to something so hateful and ugly as pain gnawing within him?

Kaidan seemed to gain some control, enough to allow the words he’d choked on before to come forward. “I should have come when she called.”

“Please don’t think like that, K. You didn’t know she was so sick. We - we didn’t know.”

“She didn’t want me to w-worry. She only thought about me while she - I should have been here.”

Shepard cupped K’s face in their hands - a face they still, to this day, felt unworthy, but oh so lucky, to caress. “Hey,” they said, pulling his caramel gaze from the floor. “You can’t blame yourself for this. You came as soon as you could.”

“I was selfish. I took too long. I - I am selfish. I don’t want her to go.”

They pulled him into their chest as he broke into a fresh round of sobs. 

So Shepard knelt there on the floor and held the man that crumpled into them. They rocked him and kissed his hair and prayed to any god that would listen to provide the comfort they could not. For it was all they could do in this sanctuary where their broken angel found no rest.


End file.
